I also wonder about the criteria for evaluation. First, are we evaluating a president’s effectiveness in achieving his agenda, without regard as to what that agenda might be? Take the case of James K. Polk, who was very effective in meeting his goals. Does that make him a great president? Or take the more complicated case of Andrew Johnson. The seventeenth president is currently considered one of the worst chief executives. Certainly his presidency was a damaging one. But was it ineffective, or was he something of a Tim Tebow in the White House, who got the job done in an ugly fashion? After all, Johnson wanted to preserve white supremacy while restoring the Union. One could argue that his obstructionist behavior undermined efforts to pursue a more fundamental reconstruction of the nation that established a sounder foundation for the future of the emancipated. Yes, a Republican-controlled Congress passed legislation and two constitutional amendments, but it also rushed to restore civil government and spent a great deal of energy in seeking to handcuff Johnson. The result was the construction of a structure on unsound ground that soon collapsed in the 1870s.

Is the criteria getting your agenda accomplished? Fitting the moral strictures of 2012? Leadership? Ability to handle a crisis? Simpson also notes that these polls way oversample biographers of famous presidents, leaving voices evaluating, say, William Howard Taft way behind.

A lot of it depends on who’s willing to host and/or the wishes of the former president. Hoover made his name in California (if anywhere in the US), but his library is in West Branch, IA. Whereas the Bush libraries are both in Texas.

Poe’s law in action. (I don’t think I’ve seen “Obummer” except in parodies.) But the explicit conflation of personal and divine (or at least historical) judgment in the last sentence captures something essential to the vanity-leftist position.

There is the postulation that the very act of list-making is invested with subtle or overt bias.

Much of the South, for example, still thinks Lincoln is the embodiment of evil, though Lincoln ranks highly on such lists. McKinley largely gets a pass because of his assassination, but was to an inordinate degree a god-botherer and a shill of Mark Hanna, who held the paper on his entire political life. Teddy Roosevelt gets generally good marks, even though he was an unabashed imperialist, and it was Taft who actually got a bit more done than Roosevelt in the trust-busting department for which Roosevelt was generally known (it was also Taft who actually put Dollar Diplomacy into play on a wider scale, thus successfully alienating much of Latin America and setting the stage for much hardship in that region in later decades).

Maybe we ought to be ranking Presidents not on what happened in their terms, but on the relative damage their policies caused in the years after they left office. Reagan would certainly rank near the bottom by that standard. So would Clinton, if only for his capitulation on welfare and banking “reforms.” Both Bushes would be disasters by that standard, and so would Carter.

But, even that standard has an implicit bias in it which is akin to the first tenet of the Hippocratic Oath, to do no harm, something which I doubt is within the ability or aim of any American President.

something which I doubt is within the ability or aim of any American President

POTUS has made an oath to do what is in the Country’s best interest. Whether they are more concerned with their legacy in the present environment, or for the sake of History’s recorded facts, they fail that vow when they pander to political expediency.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States

Perhaps the framers left out the phrase “Country’s best interest” because no one could agree on what that would be.

Nobody who uses the abbreviation “POTUS” should be listened to about anything. It’s four letters shorter than the word “president” and 17 times more annoying. It’s probably that useless corncob Aaron Sorkin’s fault.

Of course things like this will always be subjective, but it should generally be a relatively straightforward process of deciding 1) how worthy were a president’s goals and priorities, and 2) how successful was he in implementing them? (Maybe throw in a 3 for handling unexpected situations.)

I’ll suggest using that standard, just to be different. That’s a more honest and interesting standard then the sorta mishmash used by most of these lists. Plus, you’ll learn more about history if you have to figure out just what the fuck James Buchanon thought he was trying to accomplish.

Also, it would mitigate against the hero-worship of presidents if we tried to think of them in a more score-card way with less trying to find things to admire about say TR. Rounding off the edges of what people in the past actually believed so as to make people today think better of them is the lowest thing to which historians sink and is disrespectful to boot.

Also, it always gives me a nice chuckle when libertarians get into this game and rank Harding as the best president ever because he’s judged to have done almost nothing, (of course, he was somewhat elected to do almost nothing as he was campaigning against Wilson for having done to much, broadly so maybe he needs to move up the list) with some arguing for Coolidge based on wit and a few holding out for William Henry Harrison on literalism.

M: I came here for a good argument!
O: AH, no you didn’t, you came here for an argument!
M: An argument isn’t just contradiction.
O: Well! it CAN be!
M: No it can’t!
M: An argument is a connected series of statement intended to establish a
proposition.
O: No it isn’t!
M: Yes it is! ’tisn’t just contradiction.
O: Look, if I *argue* with you, I must take up a contrary position!
M: Yes but it isn’t just saying “no it isn’t”.
O: Yes it is!
M: No it isn’t!
O: Yes it is!
M: No it isn’t!
O: Yes it is!
M: No it ISN’T! Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just
the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
O: It is NOT!
M: It is!
O: Not at all!
M: It is!

US Presidents are almost all mediocre to bad. The US electoral system generally rewards empty suit puppets from a certain battleground state.

Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Truman are probably the most important Presidents. Washington for defining the traditions associated with the office, Lincoln for reuniting the country, FDR and Truman for getting through WW2 and transitioning the federal government into the one we have today.